Insulating the Attic

Sven arrived in an SUV around eleven o'clock, and we immediately headed out to buy the insulation and rent the blowing machine. After being in the attic earlier this morning, I did decided to reduce my purchase of insulation from 15 bales down to 12. This saved about ninety dollars, and I think was probably more than enough insulation.

It took two trips to get all the insulation and rental equipment home: the hose for the blower came in two full-sized trash cans, and twelve bales of insulation takes up a lot of room, too.

Interestingly, the "Home Depot Credit Card Fraud Department" called me up on second drive home, wanting to make sure I had actually purchased three hundred and eighty dollars worth of insulation. While it's certainly an unusual purchase for me, it's not really something I would expect a credit card thief to run out and buy, either. I imagine they're a little twitchy after they leaked all those credit card details.

Once everything was at the house, we got set up. Sven would be outside on the deck loading insulation into the blower, and I would be up in the attic, shooting out insulation. My end of the hose had a wireless on/off switch for the machine, which was really handy. Sven and I suited up: him in denim overalls, gloves and safety glasses, me in a full tyvek suit, glasses, gloves and respirator.

It took about an hour to go through all the insulation. I am definitely an amateur at this. I had a really hard time estimating how many bales of insulation remained, and came down from the attic a couple of times to check with Sven. If I were to do this again, I would do a couple things differently: First, I would try to have some sort of walkie talkie (or maybe just a local skype call) between the two workers. Secondly, I'd try to estimate how high the final insulation would be, and make some hash marks with a super-large sharpie on the truss uprights to keep myself consistent.

But it all worked out. The machine was surprisingly quiet, and Sven said it worked great at his end. On my end, insulation just puffed out the hose, looking a lot like pink snow. I was pretty glad I was wearing the respirator, as little flakes of fiberglass were drifting in the air the whole time the I was in the attic. The range of wasn't that great - maybe ten feet or so.

The ceiling slopes up to the right in that bottom photo - I wasn't quite that bad at distributing the insulation.

I had put plastic sheeting up over the closet door, to keep the mess contained - I didn't want fiberglass getting into the bedroom. Interestingly, there was a strong and steady draft into the closet, and then up into the attic. Which was great for keeping the mess contained, but strongly indicates I need to find a way to seal the attic access - if I don't, all this hard work with the insulation will just be routed around, through the access door.

(I could try to keep the closet door closed, but let's be honest: going way overboard and designing and building a fully automated, submarine-grade attic access would be easier than convincing Brianna to keep the closet door shut).

Here's the mess in the closet at the end of the project, and most of that fell down while I was doing the area immediately surrounding the attic access:

Unfortunately, the attic is tired of me entering and exiting so much, and the drywall cracked:

I think that's the first time I have legitimately left something worse at the end of a project.

Sigh. What's a little more drywall to patch and paint? I've done so much already.

Air Sealing the Attic

Brianna is in Colorado Springs today for a baby shower, so I have time to do messy and smelly house projects.

Our heating bills were over one hundred dollars in March and April (each!) this year, and the master bedroom got pretty sweltering during most of the summer. Hopefully, and four hundred dollar purchase in insulation (along with a big sweat-equity donation by Brian) will pay off in a year or two.

I air-sealed the attic this morning, in preparation to blow in insulation. I really need to practice yoga for a week or so ahead of going up the attic. I feel that being more limber would really help with maneuvering around the attic.

Well, hopefully after today, I won't need to be up in the attic again: one less reason to exercise!

I think I sealed up every hole in the ceiling drywall. I even puttied in some screw holes from figuring out the lights in the master bedroom. On the other hand, I kept thinking of more air holes to seal while I was up there, so it's entirely possible I missed one or two.

Here's some "before" pictures, before the new insulation comes in:

 I did some other prep work, primarily emptying out the closet (where the access to the attic is):

Why I Want to Use Blown-In Insulation in the Attic

I replied to a comment from Uncle Bill today:

I did think about buying rolled batts of insulation. Two problems made me think blown-in was a better option: 1) The entry access to our attic is small. I barely fit through it, and a lot of the rolled batts are wider than I am. 2) There are a lot of joists in the way, and maneuvering around those joists to unroll batts would dramatically increase my odds of putting my foot through the ceiling.

I also talked with my Uncle Gary, who has spent most of his career working on residential homes, about the difference between fiberglass and cellulose insulation. Our existing insulation is fiberglass and because of that, he recommends sticking with fiberglass. Apparently cellulose insulation is heavier than fiberglass and would compress the existing insulation, robbing it of a lot of its insulating value. He also agreed with the workers I talked to at Home Depot, saying that the cellulose insulation tends to settle over time.

In his own attic, Uncle Gary used fiberglass batts, and he recommended that above everything else if I had easy access to the attic. But he said with limited access to the attic, blown-in fiberglass was probably the best way to go (as long as I had a tyvek suit, face mask and safety goggles).

Attic Insulation

The central section of our attic was originally insulated with blown-in insulation. The areas above the nursery and guest bedroom, and along the sides of the house are insulated with 12-inch-thick batts. The loose insulation in the attic wasn't particularly thick to begin with - I don't think anything has been done up there between when the house was built and when I started mucking about up there. And me mucking about up there had the unintended side effect of flattening a lot of the loose insulation.

I want to blow in new insulation. After looking at my calendars, it seems like my best opportunity to blow insulation into the attic is November 1st, a week from this coming Saturday.

The home improvement group on Reddit has been pretty unanimous that cellulose based insulation is the best way to go with blown-in insulation. But when I stopped by Home Depot after work today, the workers there (well, the whole two of them I talked to) were adamant that fiberglass is the best method.

All the insulation in the attic is already fiberglass, and part of me is thinking I should mix like with like, and go with fiberglass. But I really don't know. Maybe it doesn't even matter all that much, except to the competing companies that sell fiberglass and cellulose insulation.

I did find out that if I buy 10 bales of insulation, the rental for the blowing machine is free. 10 bales would cost about $300, plus tax, minus a 5% discount for using a Home Depot credit card and letting Home Depot track all my purchases - so 10 bales will cost about $300.

I estimate I have about 600 square feet of attic I want to insulate. As long as I'm going through the hassle of borrowing a blowing machine and getting someone to help me, I might as well go whole hog on this thing: adding R49 insulation to the existing insulation in the attic ought to get me to about R60, and apparently going above R60 is rather pointless in residential settings. (Unless you're Passivhaus - then you can never have too much insulation). So, adding R49 to 600 square feet is about 15 bales of insulation, or $450, plus protective gear (tyvek suit, fresh respirator pads, goggles, gloves). Yikes. That's adding up.

...Brianna? What's my budget for this project, honey?

The worst part is, all of this is ignoring the vaulted area of the great room. I have no idea how much insulation is in that area, I only have a vague idea of how I would even access the attic space above that part of the house, and even less of an idea how I could evenly blow insulation in to the scissor trusses. Right now, I think that will have to be a project for next year, assuming I think it's a good idea at that point.

Air Sealing the Attic

No physical progress on the house today - I'm still letting my toe heal up.

I did look into adding insulation to the attic (something I want to do before winter really sets in).

I learned I'm supposed to air-seal the attic before blowing in insulation. I looked up exactly what that meant, and it's kind of a bummer: I need to caulk or otherwise seal every hole in the ceiling. And I put four additional holes in the ceiling by installing all those ceiling lights - all of which would have been relatively easy to seal at the time of installation - the hard part is getting to each section of the attic where the lights are.

Well, maybe I can seal those light fixtures from below - I'm kinda tired of being in the attic. The previous owners cut a couple of holes in the ceiling as well, for the security system. I know those need to be sealed, because I used the light leaking up through them as a reference point the previous times I was up in the attic.

Ceiling Light in Guest Bedroom

It's only been about a month since I got the light switch working in the guest bedroom, so I'm probably jumping the gun a bit (especially since the great room still needs to be painted), but getting a ceiling light installed in that room has been on my mind for a while.

So I installed one.

I had to go up into the attic again, but it was (mostly) easier than last time. I forgot the anchor screws for the ceiling electrical box, and had to come back down from the attic to get them.

I'm quite pleased with how the ceiling light looks, and it works great!

Now I just need to find someone else to touch up the paint - at this point I don't think I'm ever going to get around to it.

Update:

Well, it's still a little shadowy in corners of the ceiling, but the ceiling light gives a lot more light than that floor lamp did.

Ceiling Lights in Nursery

One of these days things are going to go as smoothly as I expect. Today was not that day.

I cut holes in the ceiling, only to discover that the ceiling joists were no where close to where my studfinder said they would be. But I was able to work around that.

After that, I went up into the attic. And that's where things got interesting.

I had Brianna down below, flipping switches, while I checked the wire up above with a contactless voltage detector. I was certain I was at the correct wires, but they were hot, regardless of the switch position. So I gave up on that for a while and installed the ceiling boxes. That involved a lot of contorting my body into precarious positions, and pretty shortly after that, swearing. But I got the boxes installed without too much trouble.

I came back down from the attic to figure out what was going on with the wires. It turned out that while there were only two wires connected to the switch (a line and a load) they were in turn connected to a big pigtail in the back of the switch box. The cable between the switch and the switched outlet was actually a 14/3 AND there was an additional 14/2, going who knows where. The 14/3 was carrying constant line voltage to the unswitched receptacle at the switched outlet, and a switched line to the switched receptacle.

Anyway, a 14/3 going to the switched outlet was great news for me - I could easily hook up two ceiling lights to that on independent switches. So I flipped the breaker and did some wiring.

By the time I finished the wiring, I was pretty tired of the attic.

But! The ceiling lights were successful! I installed the sun lamp in the center of the room, and quickly wired up an outlet in the corner, so I could plug in a lamp and test that connection as well.

Each light is controlled individually from this switch:

Now by this point in my life I've gained a tiny smidge of wisdom, and I know Murphy's Law is always waiting for an opportunity to bite. So before I cleaned up the room, I flipped the switches a bunch of times, and checked that all the outlets were working the way I wanted.

All of the outlets on one side of the room had no power.

That 14/3 wire I was so pleased with? Turns out it was carrying power for not just the switched outlet, but also for the entire half of the room. So I had to go back up to the attic. This time I spliced into that 14/2 cable that had also been running through the switch box (but wasn't actually switched) and put power back to the outlets. By the time I finished, it was noon, the attic was an oven, and I was dripping sweat. I was not in the mood to be photographed.

After a cold shower and drinking a lot of water, I cleaned up all the mess I had made - drywall crumbs and bits of insulation and plastic stripped from wires, plus my tools. By the time I finished, the Nursery looked like this:

I actually wandered over to the checklist to mark it complete, but realized I was still missing the death star light. I really wanted to finish the lighting in this room today, so we drove to IKEA and we bought the death star light for full price (things really add up when you pay full price!)

It's positioned above the chair such that both Brianna and I can reach up to open or close it while a sleeping baby pins us to the chair.

Checklist for the room is complete. Booyah:

So, it's been a long, hot, sweaty day. But Brianna started tearing up because she thought the room was so beautiful. It was worth it.